Due to the high cost of plotter ink, you will be required to pay for any plot you ask Copy Center staff to release from the print queue. You should use Print Preview in every application to be sure everything looks right before you send the plot to the print queue. You may watch the plot as it prints and if something is not as you had planned, have staff cancel it immediately. That will save some linear feet in your bad print payment.

We have acquired an additional plotter with the goal of eliminating wait times for plotting. Even during the busiest times of the day and semester, our patrons typically don't have to wait (and if they do have to wait, the time is minimal). For this reason, it is no longer necessary to reserve plotting times.

The plotter in the Library has 36 inch wide roll feed paper. Therefore your poster can be 36 inches by many feet longer or shorter.

This width limitation only limits how wide your plot can be, the length is infinitely variable up to about 100 feet. Let the Copy Center staff know if you plot will be longer than 5 feet as they may need to add more paper to the machine.

As part of Page Set Up, the file will be proportionally enlarged. Print Preview will be small enough for you to see (and you can use tools in the software to enlarge portions as needed for viewing), but it will print larger.

Many people use the plotter for printing large posters. (The largest you can print from Power Point is 36x56). It can also be used to enlarge a favorite photo (from electronic format) to poster size. It can also be used to print large AutoCad Drawings.

Library Copy Center staff can help you with sending your poster to print, but staff members are not trained in the technology for the software packages. Software guides and manuals are available for checkout in the Gerald M Kline Digital and Multimedia Center (4 West). Technical assistance may be available in your department or from consultants at off campus local printers. Also see sample templates under: What software do I use to make a poster?

Created in PowerPoint, these templates are an easy way to make a poster. Each template is a single slide enlarged to poster size, either left blank for your content or with sample text boxes and charts into which you can insert information. Feel free to alter as desired.

To open a template in Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox, right-click your mouse button on the appropriate link below, select "Save Target As" or "Save Link As," and choose where you would like to save the PowerPoint presentation. Then, open PowerPoint and open the file you just saved. Information on saving files from library computers.

Microsoft Word maximum print size is 11x17. You could convert the Word Document into a PDF format and enlarge it to send to the Plotter in a PDF Reader. (Adobe Acrobat is currently the preferred reader for Plotter files). We suggest using Powerpoint to plot a file larger than 11 x17 inches.

Go to File/Print and choose the PDF "printer" in the printer drop down menu. Send the document just as you would a print and save it. After you save it as a PDF file you may use the instructions for sending a plot from Adobe Reader to send the plot. This may sometimes cause a color variation. If this occurs, try the "Save As PDF..." function in Microsoft products to alleviate the issue.

No, the plotter is not a printing option through wireless and netprint. You may save your plot to a USB drive, log into a full application computer on 2 West or in the Map Library and send the plot. Or you may e-mail the plot file to yourself and access it from your e-mail at a full application computer on 2 West.